Monday, May 04, 2009

how soon for a bottleg to hit the streets in HK?

I once conducted a little experiment in charting Chinese bootleg DVD ETAs. My office is down the street from Toronto's Chinatown and when Jet Li's FEARLESS got released in China, I began counting the days until I saw it for sale in the vendor stalls that hawk the 4 DVDs for $10. It took just under a week until a copy was for sale. No English subtitles, but the quality was remarkably crisp.